We Fools Who Love
by kaleidoscope heart
Summary: Harry returns to Godric's Hollow before setting out in search of the horcruxes, but gets a little more than he bargained for when he discovers a diary among his parent's belongings. It soon starts a chain reaction, with effects no one could have predicted


AN: Wow, my first Harry Potter story (that I'm showing anybody, anyway)! I promised a better description inside, so I'll try to do that now. This story is going to cover all (or at least most) of the traditional canon pairings, shown by objects that help to define them somehow. I don't want to say more than that yet but rest assured this story has all of them: Harry/Ginny, Lily/James, Remus/Tonks, etc. Please don't forget to give me a little review if you read and let me know if you liked it and if everything makes sense. I won't know what to fix if you don't tell me what you like/don't like. :)

Disclaimer: I don't own anything to do with Harry Potter. Please don't sue me J.K. Rowling, because I think you're wonderful but I don't have a penny to give you.

**Chapter One- The Immortals**

It was a small room, packed with things along every wall, a thick layer of dust carpeting every object. On the opposite wall from the door where he stood was a large round window, and from that window streamed dirty, yellow sunlight which spilled onto the wooden floor of the attic like a stain. It was this light that first transfixed Harry, perhaps because of its relative safeness. He knew that just a glance away were all of his parent's possessions, objects that (even after a long attempt at trying to prepare himself) just might be the very things to set him over the edge. He stood in the doorway, his fists clenched as he glared into the dirty sunlight. Maybe a little push over the edge was the reason he had come.

Downstairs he could hear the clink of cups and saucers as Ron and Hermione talked with the elderly witch who had rescued his parents' belongings and brought them into her own home. She had been only too happy to do it, she had told him with a smile that was too small and sad to not be genuine. His parents had been heroes and their house had been destroyed, but that hadn't been the main reason. No, forcing him into a hard embrace in the doorway of the small cottage, she had told Harry the truth: she had done it for him, so he would know them. He didn't have the heart to tell her that it was far too late for that, but he did think it and was amazed when he didn't feel at all guilty for the thought.

They were downstairs, Ron and Hermione, but they had been with him for every other step of the journey up until this point. They had come with him from Bill and Fleur's wedding straight to his parent's graves, watching with sad eyes as he crouched and touched the hard granite of their tombstones and had continued in following him straight to the house, silent but worried. They kept their concern for him to themselves but still Harry could feel it pulsing from them, as palpable and yet transparent as the wind and it had been hard to mask his irritation and anger at their quiet worry. But then they had done the near impossible: they had sat silently on an old flowered couch in a stranger's sitting room and watched as he walked up the stairs to where Mrs. Neal had told him he would find what was left of his parents' things; had watched and let him go alone.

Now, standing there just inside the doorway with his heart hammering in his ears and his eyes hurting from the strain he was forcing on them, reality slowly began to return. His eyes moved from that strange patch of sunlight reluctantly, taking in a rack of women's clothing where several dresses hung. Their colors were muted and fading, their fabrics still sprinkled with dust and ash like bits of snowfall. A large, plastic garment bag hung on the right side of the rack, with a peek of white fabric and lace showing at the bottom. Harry's heart contracted painfully in his chest and he wondered if that was his mother's wedding dress hanging inside of that dirty bag, never to be worn again, never to be touched again by the woman whose memories of a happier day were intertwined with the very fabric holding it together.

He stepped completely inside. Shut the door. Closed his eyes and unclenched his fists.

He had visited his parents' graves, had stood over the dirt that covered them and touched the tombstones that were the proof of what he had been painfully aware of ever since he could remember: that they were gone. He had walked away from that feeling as if he had conquered something horrible but necessary.

This was so much worse.

This was not sadness, not of the normal variety. No, in this little room there were no eulogies, no tombstones, no graves with crumbled flowers long dried up. But there was an ache inside this room that hadn't been present at the graveyard; it was overflowing with trinkets and memories from the two people in life one should never think of as strangers. For the first time he could grasp the seriousness of his loss in a way he had never been able to before. His parents had been real, they had loved each other and built a house with each other and had been a little family… and then they had been _murdered_. Not just his parents but everything Harry had spent his whole life wanting: a family... people who loved him... _taken_.

On the way there, Hermione had all but accused him of using the trip to gather righteous anger. It had irritated him then but standing there with his eyes closed and his nostrils filling with the sad smell of dust and memories, he knew that she had been right as usual. Because at the end of the day, he still hated the way things had turned out and he still hated that it had to be him. Remembering why he was fighting helped, and remembering the people he had lost helped more. Sirius and now Dumbledore were gone, but long before that his parents had been stolen from him. And near here too, right outside this house. He could just walk over to that round window on the wall and one simple look down would show him where it had all began. For the first time he could see clearly what he was doing and he nearly hated himself for it. He had come back to the beginning to find the nerve to end it all.

So he opened his eyes again. Took another deep breath. Crossed the room to the window and promptly stumbled over a huge trunk.

He gasped and pin wheeled his arms to steady himself, the noise loud in the tiny attic. He regained his balance quickly enough but the pain in his foot was sweeping and irritating, causing him to curse and wheeze as he inspected his injury. He was sure the damn trunk hadn't been there when he looked before.

He looked down at it, fighting the irrational and yet almost overpowering urge to kick it again, and was only truly stopped by the sight of a large crest embellished on the top of the chest. He dropped to his knees as suddenly as if the floor had dropped out from beneath him and used the sleeve of his muggle shirt to wipe the dust from the crest until it gleamed in the light that filtered down from the window. It appeared to be a Gryfindor prefect badge that had somehow been attached to the trunk. His mind whirled with quick questions: who had it belonged to? Was it one of his parent's? What was the trunk doing here, in the middle of the floor just waiting for someone to trip over it?

There was a lock on the trunk but it wasn't closed completely and when Harry pushed the lid back it opened effortlessly and without a sound. Harry thought that was strange considering the fact that it probably hadn't been opened for over 15 years but the thought was quickly driven from his mind by the contents of the trunk.

It seemed to be full of things from his parents' years at Hogwarts: old robes, spell books, some papers and pictures. There was a silk lining of the trunk and running his hand along the side Harry found a small opening. From it he pulled a small, leather-bound book. _Diary_ the front read in a sprawling gold script, and his heart turned over. He remembered all too well what had happened the last time he had found and read a diary and just like clockwork his mind had turned to Ginny. His heart beat against the cage of his chest like an animal trying to escape and he closed his eyes again, breathing deeply and remembering her sad eyes at the wedding, the looks between them that he had tried to banish and that wouldn't seem to disappear even with the nightmares he had about her death. He was sweating now and he wasn't sure if it was the sunlight's fault or his own. His shirt was matted with it and was clinging to him under the arms but all he could feel now was the heat of her touch. All he could imagine were her eyes when she looked up at him from the floor of the chamber of secrets and her eyes at the funeral. She had looked at him like a hero the first time, like an object to be pitied the second time. He was both of those things and neither of those things. He was starting to feel a bit like an object, a chess piece, a pawn, meant to take the hit for the greater good and getting a little too comfortable with the life that he was never meant to have. He'd been forced to walk away, not because he was brave or noble but because he _wasn't._ Because if he hadn't left her at that moment then he never would have; he would have let the world crumble and die for one of her sweet smiles, would have let the sacrifices of Sirius, Dumbledore, and even his parent's go to rot for one of her looks in his direction.

He took a deep breath. Opened the diary. Drove her red hair and sweet smile from his mind by reading the first entry.

**_Dear Diary, _**

**_Hmmm… let's see... did anything exciting happen to me today? We went shopping, mother and I. Petunia brought home a new boyfriend (Vermin? Vernon? Something like that). Let's see… oh yeah._**

_**Found out I was a witch. **_

_**I guess I always sort of knew it. I mean, there was the time when I caught Petunia's hair on fire and how objects seem to levitate when I'm angry. But I didn't know that having (as Mom calls it) "gifts" like that would be such a common thing that they could have a school for it! (Especially when I think about how normal my family is. Petunia couldn't levitate a helium filled balloon!)**_

_**So that's it then. In one month I'll be on my way to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Everyone is taking it fairly well except Petunia, and even she is won't really say anything out of fear that I'll hex her silly! I wonder what will happen there and who I'll meet. I know it's just a school and I should probably be dreading it but for some reason it feels like the start to an adventure! **_

_**Aw bugger. Petunia's pestering me to turn off the light so it looks like this might have to be the end to the first entry in my new journal. Don't worry though, I'll write again soon! (Why would you worry? You're just a diary!)**_

_**Lily Evans**_

Harry looked up from the diary, sweat now nearly pouring off his face and his glasses sliding. His heart was beating even wilder than before as he reached out to trace the thin, girlish handwriting. His mother had written this before her first year at Hogwarts, when she was younger than he was now. He ran his finger (calloused from clutching at his broom in Quidditch) over the line "_it feels like the start to an adventure"_ and wondering randomly if he believed in fate.

He flipped a few pages forward, not sure why, not knowing what he was looking for. He stopped after a few pages and a smile lit up his face at the opening sentence, the first in a while. The entry read:

**_Dear diary,_**

**_James Potter must be the stupidest, most arrogant git I've ever met in my life. Who is James Potter you might ask, dear diary (if you could)? Well, I'll tell you. He is the stupidest, most arrogant git I've ever met! And I'm counting Petunia._**

**_He ruined my new robes! Still on the train, not even at the bloody school yet and that fuzzy-haired prat ripped my robes! And what did he do then, after ruining my important day and getting the whole of my school years started off on the wrong foot? He smiled at me, and his other friend laughed right out loud! It was hard to resist stuffing my brand new wand right down his annoying throat! _**

Here Harry paused, shaking his head and laughing despite himself. He wondered how an eleven year old Lily would have reacted to the news that she would one day marry that stupid, arrogant git? He leaned farther over the book and something very strange happened indeed.

A very tiny bead of sweat fell from his forehead and landed in a blank margin at the top of the page. The spot was damp for a moment, half a breath, then the moisture faded. In its wake, a word appeared.

**_'Say,' _**it read.

Harry's heart once more began to thump a war beat in his chest. This was an awfully familiar situation and that worried him of course, but still…

Harry wiped the sweat from his brow and ran his damp finger across the rest of the margin, barely daring to breathe as he waited for the results. The previous actions repeated themselves and soon there was a sentence instead of just one word. They read:

**_'Say the magic words Marauder!'_**

Harry's breath hitched, the world swirled in a mixture of the boring grays and browns that made up the tiny attic. He hesitated only for a moment before groping in his pocket for his wand, the room echoing with the small, crisp sound it made when it came down upon the paper.

"I solemnly swear I am up to no good!" he whispered; it almost came out as a hiss. He jumped when the wand gave a little zap, then waited for whatever else that was supposed to happen to begin. He lingered anxiously for a long moment in that same position, feeling almost unable to breathe in the stuffy little attic with his shirt stuck to him and his glasses slipping on his nose. He didn't blink for that time and his eyes burned from the effort but nothing else happened. His disappointment was swift and surprising. In that moment he wouldn't have cared if Voldemort himself had climbed out of that diary, as long as he didn't have to feel this silly embarrassment, this horrible _emptiness, _from a simple overreaction. For the first time since his first year at Hogwarts, since the Mirror of Erised, Harry had felt a strong connection with his parents that went beyond loss and fear. He had almost felt that he could _know _them. With a lingering sadness somewhere deep down in his heart, he reached out to run his finger over the words again…

and was shocked when a wave of something as strong as an electrical current swept through his body. His jaws locked, nipping his tongue and causing the blood to flow. His body shook as if in seizure. His eyes rolled back to whites. His finger, still somehow glued to the words on the page began to slide across and the pain faded. And now the strangest thing of all: a movie was playing in his head, a vision as clear as having one of those muggle televisions inside of his brain. There was a girl with red hair and familiar eyes, her hands out in shock and outrage as she looked down on her ruined school robes. Somewhere, a million miles away (outside this vision, in another world almost) Harry could feel and hear the harsh whisper of his hand moving across the page at a lightning pace. Inside the vision Harry could hear a familiar laugh (Sirius!) and could see a smiling boy that could only be his father. Although his heart and his mind felt like they were in two separate places, Harry knew it was racing. He was seeing how his parents had first met and though he now knew the diary was enchanted, the thought no longer scared him at all. He pushed forward, the mental equivalent of diving somehow, and surged into the vision…

_Lily Evans was sitting in the first cabin on the Hogwarts Express, her flaming hair draped over one shoulder, her knees locked and her body straight and tight. So far many of her fellow students had looked into her cabin while making their way through the train and all had kept going, leaving her to wait alone in the relative silence. Biting her lip she shifted uncomfortably on the bench, trying to look nonchalant and failing miserably. She was a friendly enough girl but she considered herself to be dreadful with first impressions… not shy as much as reserved, unwilling to throw herself out into the open for a new friendship. Not desperate. _

_So she had tried the waiting game, assuming (hoping, blindly against all hope) that soon the back of the train would fill up and she would be in a cabin with someone perfectly nice and normal, maybe even make a friend or two. No such luck._

_She got The Marauders instead._

_They weren't The Marauders yet, at least not in name, but they were well on their way to becoming troublemakers and school hadn't even started yet. It was James Potter that lead the little pack into Lily's quiet little cabin, smiling broadly with a self assuredness that made her wonder how old he was. Following him was Sirius Black and a rather disheveled looking Remus Lupin. Peter Pettigrew, who had apparently been following the boys since the train station, waited nervously in the doorway._

_"'ello. You don't mind if we sit here, do you?" James asked, flopping down practically on top of her without waiting for a response. Sirius, looking scruffy and yet handsome in a dangerous sort of way, threw himself into the seat across from her while Remus at least waited for some vague sort of acknowledge from her before he sat down quietly. Peter shuffled in when he thought no one was looking. _

_Silence stretched on. The boy who was James (though Lily didn't yet know his name) was sitting on her robes and Lily was trying none too successfully to pull them out without making too much of a fuss. James either didn't notice her plight or ignored it completely, instead turning to her and giving her an arrogant smile. _

_"First year at Hogwarts? It's ours too." Well that answered the age question, not that Lily cared anymore. "I'm James Potter. These are my friends… Sirius Black," the black haired boy tipped his head at her with a smile; she was still tugging in vain on her robes. "Remus Lupin…" The second boy smiled, looking almost understanding. Her annoyance at the boy next to her was quickly becoming anger. "And… er…" _

_"Peter, Peter Pettigrew," spoke up the twitchy boy in the corner. James seemed to dismiss the name almost as soon as he heard it. _

_"And your name?" he asked, and now she knew he had to be ignoring her because she was tugging quite hard at this point. _

_"Lily," she grumbled, and gave a frantic pull._

_"I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you."_

_And at last her temper had had enough. She exploded in a mess of flying red hair and waving hands, causing Peter to leap into the air with surprise. _

_"I SAID MY NAME IS LILY EVANS AND WILL YOU PLEASE STOP SITTING ON MY ROBES!"_

_James smiled at her again, his amusement only seeming to grow at her outburst, and lifted his weight from the robe. Across the aisle in the other seat, Sirius had the back of his hand over his mouth, attempting to hide a smile that was far too wide to be covered. Lily pulled her robes over into her lap and froze instantly when she saw it: a rip. A huge, long, ugly rip right down the side of the brand new robes her mother had bought her a mere seven days ago. _

_Someone was going to die._

_James Potter was going to die._

_"You… you…" she was stuttering she was so angry, her fury so blinding that for a moment she had forgotten how to form a complete sentence. James leaned closer (how could he get any closer?) and his black hair fell over his eyes. _

_"Oh, you tore your robes," he said simply, innocently even. _

_"Yes you… wait… what?" Lily was beyond anger, beyond confusion even. She was stunned. No one stood in the face of Lily Evans and treated her like this, no one that wanted to survive anyway. In some small way she would never admit, she almost respected him for it. He didn't even flinch when her fist curled around her wand, instead he smiled what he must have thought, even at that tender age, was a charming smile. _

_"You tore it," he continued. Fearless this one was. "Just now, when you had your little crazy fit and started screaming like you were mad. Or is a medical condition? Do you not remember after?"_

_Sirius's loud bark of laughter was what broke through her haze. He had been bursting at the seams the entire time anyway and now he let loose with a laugh that was loud and, quite frankly, a little crazy sounding. Lily looked at him, looked back at James, looked at the rip, looked back at James. A howl of frustration broke free from her throat, making her sound every bit as crazy as Sirius had with his laugh only moments ago. Throwing her hands in the air (and wishing, oh so badly, that her knowledge of magic was good enough to know a hex she could use on the insufferable prat in front of her), she stormed from the room in a flurry of hair and robes. Behind her she could hear James say, "Well, that went well didn't it?" and Sirius's laughter as he replied, "Right mate. I think it might be love."_

"Harry?" a voice called, far off but somehow near and Harry's hand jerked from the page, ripping him from that world as effectively as if he had been yanked by a rope. For a moment there was only silence and the sound of Harry's harsh breathing, then one of the stairs creaked again and Hermione's voice drifted through the closed attic door, muffled but clear with concern.

"Harry?"

"I'm here. I'll be done in a few more minutes," Harry panted, his fingers itching for the words in the book. There was another squeak from the stairs, as if she were shifting her weight on them uncertainly, a habit he knew she had when she was thinking quickly.

"Would you like us to come up with you?"

"No!" he said, and winced when it came out as a yell. "I mean no, I shouldn't be much longer and I'd kind of like to do this alone."

Hermione was silent for another second and Harry held his breath while looking down at the small book. He felt bad about keeping it from her and Ron but not to the point that he wanted her storming through the door and ripping the book from his hands, which she would surely do if she knew he was immersing himself in an enchanted diary. Ever since Tom Riddle's diary, Hermione had taken a, 'guilty until proven innocent' approach to enchanted items, and ever since the **canary incident** Ron didn't make it a habit of disagreeing with Hermione.

"Ok…" she said quietly, and Harry thought he heard a small trace of hurt in her voice. "If you're sure you're all right…"

Harry didn't answer but Hermione left anyway, walking down the stairs, each one squeaking when it encountered her weight. When the noise had stopped and Harry was sure enough the squeaks had commenced, he pulled the diary back into his lap and examined it closely.

It had been similar to using a pensieve, only he had no physical body nor thoughts of his own. More so, it had been very much like plunging head first into someone else's memory, or like being inside one of those muggle movies that Dudley had loved to watch so much. But how had it happened? He was pretty sure an eleven year old Lily hadn't been capable of the charm, and the message had clearly addressed him as a Marauder. It had to have been someone who had at least known about the map, but why would someone enchant a diary to do something like this? What was the point of it?

He turned the page on the diary again, his hands reaching for a new entry, his fingers slipping across the words from the page. There was less pain this time, less surprise. He was conscious of his tongue and jaw and this time when his eyes rolled back, he welcomed it.

He was immersed in it...


End file.
